Life is full of moments we just can’t prepare for. Many times it’s little things like spilling a drink on your boss’s lap or forgetting to hit the save button right before your computer crashes. Those moments are hardly pleasant, but we’re incredibly lucky if those are the only kinds of “disasters” we encounter.
We’re not the only ones with exposure to unfortunate happenings; our business information is, too. The difference is that we can put plans in place to ensure the safety of some of our most important assets. Building a disaster recovery plan is crucial for not only ensuring your business will keep thriving in the event of a catastrophe, but for keeping your data protected in general, as it forces you to review and test several aspects of the security of your information.
Here are some tips to help you through the disaster recovery planning process so your organization can weather the storms – real or metaphorical.
1. Make sure there’s a back-up copy of all critical information and that it’s stored in a different location than the first copy. That location should be either in the cloud or far enough away that the same event cannot destroy both copies, and the resources needed to access that data should be available in both places. Backups should occur at least once a week so stored data will always be up-to-date.
2. Ensure that the plan itself is accessible in the event of a disaster, and that the same, updated version has been distributed to everyone who needs it. A plan, no matter how great it is, is useless if it’s missing or executed incorrectly.
3. How do you know if your business continuity plan is good? An extremely important step to making sure your plan is successful is disaster recovery testing in real life. Not only will this work out any kinks or holes in your plan, but it’ll train your employees on actions that need to be taken so everyone is already familiar with their responsibilities if catastrophe should strike.
4. Keep your disaster recovery plan updated with any changes in business processes that may affect it by reviewing it on a regular basis to ensure it’s still accurate.
Planning for disaster can be easy or extremely difficult, depending on the state of your content. An enterprise content management (ECM) system can take you miles in simplifying your preparations by securely storing your information, providing copies of your data in off-site locations, and automatically keeping your document versions up-to-date to prevent the distribution of inconsistent plans. ECM is much more than a bit of shielding against disaster, though. To learn more about it, check out our free E-Guide below.
